Hi,
Firstly let me say I am a newby and will ask forgiveness now if I should say something stupid.

My set up is:

5v 8Amp  power supply ( this is a SMPS I had available)

USB Voltage monitor connected

USB Keyboard Mouse Combo

I have been loading images on to a couple of 8G Micro SD cards and then observing the result.

		Imager software
Sequence	OS Image	Phoenix Card 3.1.0	Etcher v1.0.0-beta.17	Result / Observations
1	sun8iw7p1_android_orangepi_pc_uart0_v0.8.0	Yes		1. Red LED On,        2. Green Led On then Off after about 5 seconds,     3. Screen shows H3 Quad Core logo then disappears after about a  minute     4. SSH not possible after 5 minutes - error message "Network  connection refused"     5. after 25minutes screen with space image and Chineese text flashed. top  right corner shows network connectivity icon, Mouse and keyboard not  recognised     6. still can't SSH to OPIOne       7. Screen flashes blank and then home page.   Powered down after 40 minutes
2	Armbian_5.14_Orangepione_Debian_jessie_3.4.112_desktop		Yes	1. No Red LED, Screen  blank     2. No change after 5 minutes     3. Powered down after 10 minutes
3	pcDuino4STB_android_H3_4.4_8188-20150608.img	Yes		1. Red LED Turns On, Screen  shows "Android TV box"     2. No Lan activity LED     3. Powered down after 15 minutes and no change
4	Armbian_5.20_Orangepione_Debian_jessie_3.4.112		Yes	1. No Red LED, Screen blank,  Green LAN activity LED flashes     2. No change after 5 minutes     3. Powered down after 15 minutes
5	Lubuntu_1404_For_OrangePiPC_v0_8_0_.img		Yes	1. Red LED turns On     2. Screen Blank     3. No Lan activity LED     4. powered Down after 60 minutes
6	OrangePI_Ubuntu_Vivid_Mate.img		Yes	1. Red LED turns On     2. Screen Blank     3. No Lan activity LED     4. Powered Down after 20 minutes
7	Raspbian_For_OrangePi_PC_v0_8_0.img		Yes	1. Red LED turns On     2. Screen Blank     3. No Lan activity LED     4. Powered Down after 20 minutes
9	Volumio1.5_for_OrangePi_v0.2.img		Yes
8	OpenELEC-H3.arm-7.0-devel-20161026221335-r23113-g64b34b3-opione.img		Yes	1. Red LED stays Off     2. Screen goes in to Power Saving mode     3. Lan activity LED flashed Powered downafter30minutes

As shown above my success rate sucks.  I monitor the USB voltage and noticed it is usually 5volts but it dips down to 4.8volts occassionly.
I really would like to make this work.  Any distro in english will suffice.
Should monitoring the serial debug port on start up be my next step?

I went ahead and added a Serial debug terrminal.


Is this what I should expect?

This is suspicious ... would need to check.

You have nothing after "Starting kernel" ?

Can you edit .env or boot.cmd and set verbosity to 9 and try again. If you edit boot.cmd you need to convert it to boo.scr ...

I suspect i have two issues:
I was using two different SD cards and I think one may be faulty or non optimal.  I accidentally removed it without powering it down and thought nothing of it. I will source a couple more today.  I have since got the  Armbian_5.20_Orangepione_Debian_jessie_3.4.112 to load.  
The other issue may be temperature.  I swapped OPI One boards and is loaded immediately.  I notice the H3 on the first board felt too hot. it was uncomfortable to hold my finger on it.  Today I will source a heatsink glue to stick an aluminium heat sink on the H3 chip.

The investigation continues and I will re-run the above image attempts when I get new hardware

It appears I have a dead OPI One.  New SD card don't change the situation help.
I loaded Armbian_5.20_Orangepione_Debian_jessie_3.4.112 on a new Micro SD card.  
On boot up the following was output from the debug port:


It has the same suspission code.  I also confirm there is nothing after Starting kernel.

BTW I also checked the new SD card in the other OPIOne that I got working.